Miracle survivor of Bangladesh factory collapse changed into clothes of her dead colleague before being rescued: 19-year-old who lived off water from dripping pipe for 17 days emerged from ruins in a mauve wrap and pink scarf

Reshma Begum, 19, had been trapped in the basement of the eight-storey Rana Plaza since April 24

Waved a hand to rescuers before telling them her name was Reshma and she was 'not much hurt'

Emerged wearing different outfit after changing into the clothes of dead colleague while trapped

Survived by scavenging for dried food in the wreckage around her

Huge cheers from crowd of rescuers as she was taken away to hospital in an ambulance

Doctors say she is virtually uninjured and is even able to walk

Dozens of badly decomposed bodies pulled from the rubble have been sent for DNA identification

Bangladeshi authorities have ordered shut down of 18 factories over further safety fears

Survivors wages are now being paid by the government following massive street protests

She told police she had made contact with three other people under the rubble, but one by one they fell silent

These are the first pictures of miracle survivor Reahma Begum, 19, who was pulled from the rubble of a Bangladesh factory after 17 days.

The seamstress wept with relief as she was pulled alive from the wreckage yesterday that has claimed more than 1,000 lives.

Nineteen-year-old Reshma Begum, who emerged almost unscathed, had been trapped near a basement prayer room and survived by scavenging for dried food in the wreckage around her.

She emerged from the wreckage wearing a different outfit than she wore on the day of the disaster. It is believed she changed her clothes while she was trapped, and wore the dress of a dead colleague.

She was discovered after rescuers heard groaning, moments before they were due to demolish a concrete slab surrounding the tiny space where she was entombed.

Speaking from her hospital bed in Dhaka, she said: 'It was so bad for me. I never dreamed I'd see the daylight again.'

She told police she had made contact with three other people under the rubble, but one by one they fell silent - rescue workers later recovered their bodies near from where Reshma was found.

The incredible discovery came as the
death toll from the accident, which has become the world's worst
industrial accident since the Bhopal disaster in India in 1984, rose above 1,000. There are fears many more bodies are trapped inside.

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These are the first pictures of 19-year-old Reshma Begum, who is receiving treatment following 17 days in the rubble

The miracle survivor is recovering in hospital. She said she lived off water from a dripping pipe while she was trapped

Miss Begum is said to be in remarkably good health, considering her ordeal. She is being treated at a military hospital near Bangladesh

The 19-year-old emerged from the wreckage wearing a wrap and scarf different to what she had worn on the day of the collapse. She changed into the clothes of a dead colleague

Miracle survival: The woman, named Reshma, gasped for air as she was pulled from the rubble and stretchered to safety, pictured above, after spending 17 days trapped beneath the wreckage of the factory in Bangladesh

Jubilation: Hordes of rescue workers and army soldiers carry Reshma from the scene of the disaster to hospital where she is said to have no serious injuries

Incredible escape: Reshma alerted rescuers by groaning and waving her hand and was given food and biscuits as they spent 40 minutes cutting her free

Endurance: The incredible discovery came as the death toll from the accident, which has become the world's worst industrial accident since the Bhopal disaster in India in 1984, rose above 1,000

Determined to live: Reshma was given oxygen and managed to tell rescuers she was 'not much hurt'

Beacon of hope: Rescuers let out a huge cheer after Reshma was pulled from the wreckage alive this afternoon

TRAPPED UNDERGROUND: HAS BANGLADESH SURVIVOR SET NEW RECORD?

Reshma is believed to have spent 17 days trapped beneath the wreckage of the Bangladesh factory.

The
longest-survivor of a natural disaster is Evans Monsignac, who spent 27
days buried beneath rubble following the Haiti earthquake.

The father-of-two was pulled
from wreckage in the capital of Port-au-Prince and said he had survived
by sipping sewage underneath the rubble of the marketplace where he was
buried.

'I thought I was
dead. I was in shock. On the second day, maybe the third day, I realised
I seemed to be alive and I saw this water.

'I
was hungry and thirsty and I tried to drink something but it was making
me sick in my belly. I would take my little finger and wet my lips and
swallow it, but the sicker I got as time went on,’ he told the Sunday
Telegraph.

Evans said being
entombed in the rubble for nearly a month took a heavy mental toll -
when he first arrived in Florida for treatment he was extremely
disturbed and suffering hallucinations.

He weighed just 40kgs (88lbs) when he was admitted, having shed 27kgs (60lbs) during his ordeal.

Despite
being severely dehydrated when he was found, doctors were astounded he
did not have any damage to his kidneys, although he did suffer from
post-traumatic shock, screaming loudly and burying his head into his
pillow.

Other incredible feats of human endurance include:

Japan 2004: A two-year-old was pulled alive from a car that he had been buried under for four days.

Iran 2004: A woman in her 90s was rescued after nine days buried in the rubble of her home after the Bam earthquake.

South Korea 1995: A woman was pulled from the wreckage of a collapsed supermarket 16 days after it collapsed.

Reshma, a seamstress, says she survived by eating dried food that was in her area and drinking spare amounts of water with her.

She was discovered on the second floor of the eight-story Rana Plaza building, where crews have been focused on recovering bodies, not rescuing survivors, for much of the past two weeks.

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'I heard voices of the rescue workers for the past several days. I kept hitting the wreckage with sticks and rods just to attract their attention,' she told the private Somoy TV from her hospital bed as doctors and nurses milled about, giving her saline and checking her condition.

'No one heard me. It was so bad for me. I never dreamed I'd see the daylight again,' she said.

'There was some dried food around me. I ate the dried food for 15 days.

'The last two days I had nothing but water. I used to drink only a limited quantity of water to save it. I had some bottles of water around me,' she said.

Once Reshma finally got their attention, the crews ordered the cranes and bulldozers to immediately stop work and used handsaws and welding and drilling equipment to cut through the iron rod and debris still trapping her.

They gave her water, oxygen and saline as they worked to free her. When Reshma was freed after 40 minutes, the crowd erupted in wild cheers.

She was rushed to a military hospital in an ambulance, but her rescuers said she was in shockingly good condition, despite her ordeal.

Abdur Razzak, a warrant officer with the military's engineering department who first spotted her in the wreckage, said she could even walk.

'She was fine, no injuries. She was just trapped. The space was wide,' said Lt. Col. Moyeen, an army official at the scene.

Reshma told her rescuers there were no more survivors in her area. Workers began tearing through the nearby rubble anyway, hoping to find another person alive.

'Reshma told me there were three others with her. They died. She did not see anybody else alive there,' said Maj. Gen. Chowdhury Hasan Suhrawardy, the head of the local military units.

The bodies were eventually recovered from another section of the building not far from Reshma, he said.

The woman survived for more than two weeks in temperatures that touched the mid 90s (mid 30s Celsius). She scrounged for whatever food she could find, Suhrawardy said.

Then, when the workers with bulldozers and cranes got close to the area where she was trapped, she took a still pipe and began banging it to attract attention, Razzak said. The workers ran into the dark rubble, eventually getting flashlights, to free her, he said.

Reshma's mother and her sister, Asma, rushed to the hospital to meet her.

They said they had kept a vigil for the seamstress, who is from the rural Dinajpur district, 270 kilometers (170 miles) north of Dhaka.

She said they had been losing hope amid the endless string of grim days, when only scores of dead bodies were removed from the rubble.

'We got her back just when we had lost all our hope to find her alive,' she told Somoy TV. 'God is so merciful.'

Hundreds of people who had been engaged in the grim job of removing decomposing bodies from the site raised their hands together in prayer for her survival.

'Allah, you are the greatest, you can do anything. Please allow us all to rescue the survivor just found,' said a man on a loudspeaker leading the supplicants. 'We seek apology for our sins. Please pardon us, pardon the person found alive.'

Workers at the site had been clearing the rubble since the collapse April 24. More than 2,500 people were rescued in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. However, no survivors had been found in the wreckage since April 28, when Shahin Akter was found amid the wreckage. As workers tried to free her, a fire broke out and she died of smoke inhalation.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, called Reshma in the hospital, and the rescued woman began crying on the phone, Suhrawardy said. She told Hasina: 'I am fine, please pray for me,' he said.

Emotional: Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, called Reshma in the hospital, and the rescued woman began crying on the phone, Suhrawardy said. She told Hasina: 'I am fine, please pray for me,' he said

Check up: The woman looked emotional as she as checked over by medical staff in the hospital

Hasina, whose government has come under criticism for its lax oversight over the powerful garment industry, was racing to the hospital by helicopter to meet her, and congratulated the rescuers, officials said.

'This is an unbelievable feat,' Hasina was quoted as saying by her assistant, Mahbubul Haque Shakil.

The
death toll from the accident, which has become the world's worst
industrial accident since the Bhopal disaster in India in 1984, has
climbed above 1,000 and more bodies might still be trapped inside.

Army officials ordered workers to stop
clearing the site with bulldozers and cranes as they tried to free the
woman they said might still be alive.

A soldier at the scene said
rescuers found a woman in the debris and she waved her hand in response
to them.

Rescuers used a handsaw as well as welding and drilling equipment to try
to cut through the iron rod and debris trapping her. They asked for a
small oxygen cylinder to be brought to the site.

Hundreds of people, who had been engaged in the grim job of removing
decomposing bodies from the site, raised their hands together to pray for the woman to be freed alive.

A man on a loudspeaker shouted: 'Allah, you are the greatest, you can do anything. Please
allow us all to rescue the survivor just found.'

It has seemed as if there was no end in sight to the stream of bodies being pulled from the wreckage of the worst-ever garment industry disaster

The grim work goes on: Excavators clear debris
as Bangladeshi rescue and army personnel continue recovery operations at
the site of the eight-storey building collapse in Savar on the
outskirts of Dhaka. Dozens of bodies recovered today were
so badly decomposed they have been sent for DNA identification, police
said

Masked rescue workers retrieve a dead body from
the rubble: The workers at the factories made clothes for familiar High
Street brands including Primark and Matalan in the UK, and Spanish label
Mango. Police in Bangladesh said the bodies of 1038 garment factory workers have been recovered so far

Abdur
Razzak, a warrant officer with the military's engineering department
who spotted her in the wreckage, said she was OK and could even walk.

Bodies
are still being pulled from the rubble of the Rana Plaza complex, and
on Friday a spokesman at the army control room coordinating the
operation said the number of people confirmed to have been killed had
reached 1,038.

The workers there made clothes for familiar High Street brands including Primark and Matalan in the UK, and Spanish label Mango.

A
series of deadly incidents at factories have focused global attention
on safety standards in Bangladesh's booming garment industry.

Eight
people were killed in a fire at a factory this week, which an industry
association said on Friday may have been started deliberately.

Roughly 2,500 people were rescued
from Rana Plaza, in the industrial suburb of Savar, around 20 miles (30
km) northwest of Dhaka, including many injured, but there is no official
estimate of the numbers still missing.

The disaster, believed to have been
triggered when generators were started up during a blackout, has put the
spotlight on Western retailers who use the impoverished South Asian
nation as a source of cheap goods.

Nine people have been arrested in
connection with the disaster, including the building's owner and bosses
of the factories it housed.

Hundreds of relatives were still
gathered at the site, some holding up photographs of family members.
Rescue workers have found it increasingly difficult to identify
decomposing bodies and are using ID cards found on them or even their
mobile phones to do so.

Life-changing: A young Bangladeshi garment worker who was rescued from a building that collapsed sits on a hospital bed with an amputated leg, in Savar, on the outskirts of Dhaka

Assistance: Mizanur feeds his wife Sonia who lost one leg while being trapped inside pillars during the Rana Plaza building collapse

Recovering: Anna lies in a hospital bed as she lost one hand while being trapped inside the rubble

'A total of 156 unidentified victims
have been buried,' said Dhaka District Administrator Mohammad Yousuf
Harun, adding that DNA samples taken from the bodies had been preserved
so tests could be done if relatives come forward later.

The government has blamed the owners
and builders of the eight-storey complex for using shoddy construction
materials, including substandard rods, bricks and cement, and not
obtaining the necessary clearances.

Bangladesh's garment industry, which
accounts for 80 per cent of the poor South Asian country's exports, has
seen a series of deadly accidents, including a fire in November that
killed 112 people.

The Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers
and Exporters Association (BGMEA) said it believed a fire at the Tung
Hai Group factory in Dhaka this week, in which eight people including
the firm's managing director and a senior police officer were killed,
may have been arson.

'We think this was an act of
sabotage. We want a proper investigation into this," said BGMEA
President Mohammad Atiqul Islam. "When the fire broke out the factory
was closed and most of the switches in the factory were off.'

Fire service officials said they were still investigating the cause the fire.

Duty-free access offered by Western
countries and low wages have helped turn Bangladesh's garment exports
into a $19 billion-a-year industry, with 60 percent of clothes going to
Europe.

The European Union, which gives
preferential access to Bangladeshi garments, had threatened punitive
measures in order to press Dhaka to improve worker safety standards
after the collapse of the illegally built factory on April 24..

Mass burial: The bodies of 34 unidentified garment workers killed when the Rana Plaza building collapsed in Bangaladesh have been interred in a mass burial a week after the disaster

A country in mourning: A crowd gathered in front of the row of graves at the traditional Muslim funeral today, following the horrific collapse that exposed the unsafe conditions plaguing Bangladesh's garment industry

Sorrow: The European Union is considering trade action against Bangladesh, which has preferential access to EU markets for its garments, in order to pressure Dhaka to improve safety standards after the building collapse killed hundreds of factory workers

About 4 million people work in Bangladesh's garment industry, making it the world's second-largest apparel exporter after China.

Following protests, authorities also
began disbursing salaries and other benefits to survivors of the
collapse and ordered the shut down of a string of factories over further
safety concerns.

The latter move came days after
Bangladesh agreed with the International Labor Organisation to give
safety 'the highest consideration', despite fears Western bargain
retailers might source goods elsewhere.

'Sixteen
factories have been closed down in Dhaka and two in Chittagong,' said
textile minister Abdul Latif Siddique, adding that more could be shut if
they do not meet strict new safety measures.

He
added: 'We have seen that those who claim to be the best compliant
factories in Bangladesh have not fully abided by building regulations.'

Police
said 803 bodies had been recovered from the wreckage of the eight-story
Rana Plaza building by late afternoon. More were expected as salvage
work continued two weeks after the April 24 collapse.

The
owner of the building only had permission for a five storey structure
and there is speculation that his exceeding that was the cause of the
collapse.

There is no clear indication of how
many bodies still remain trapped in the debris because the exact number
of people inside the building at the time of the incident is unknown.

Escape: Rescuers used massive strips of cloth as escape chutes from the textile factories to help the workers escape the devastation after the eight-storey building collapsed in Bangladesh

Destroyed: The building housed several garment factories and collapsed
near Bangladesh's capital on April 24

More than 2,500 people were pulled from the rubble alive in the days following the disaster.

The
Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association earlier said
3,122 workers were employed at the five factories housed in the
building, but it was not clear how many were there during the packed
morning shift.

Major General Chowdhury Hasan
Suhrawardy, a top military official in the area, said the operation to
recover bodies from the tangle of wreckage could continue for two to
three more days.

His men had
to send 36 decomposing bodies to Dhaka Medical College Hospital to
collect DNA samples because they were beyond identification, he said.

With
temperatures at the site exceeding 30C and rain pouring down almost
constantly, authorities expect to send many more rotting corpses for DNA
identification in the coming days.

The
disaster is the worst ever in the garment sector, far surpassing fires
last year that killed about 260 people in Pakistan and 112 in
Bangladesh, as well as the 1911 garment disaster in New York's Triangle
Shirtwaist factory that killed 146 workers.